Counterintuitive Way Of Dealing With Grief

Dealing with grief is that most of us face in some form or another and at some point or another in our lives when we lose somebody.

We tend to have the idea that when we lose someone we have to feel grief and that it has to be there.

In this article, I’m going to help you to understand grief much differently and help you to lose your grief if you decide that you want to.

What you are going to read is likely to be drastically different from what you’ve read in other articles about this topic. But if you are open to reading further, you might discover something completely different and liberating.

The Phases Of Grief

There are two phases of grief: 1) You want to feel grief. 2) You want to stop grieving.

The main issue with grief is that we often want to stay grieving for a long period of time because we have beliefs about what this grief means for us.

For many people feeling grief means that they care about a certain person and that they should feel sad because of it.

The second issue is that when we want to stop grieving and feeling sad, we don’t know how to do it.

Many people have the idea that the intensity and the duration to which they grieve determines how much they loved the person who died.

That’s a hugely common belief about grief, but it’s not true.

As long as you believe that grief means that you care and love someone, then you are also going to believe the opposite to be true.

You are going to believe that if you are happy, when you lose someone you love, then you are a bad and selfish person and that you have to feel guilty about it.

That belief makes you want to stay suffering and doesn’t allow you to become happy again.

Question Your Thoughts

What you really need to do is to reevaluate the validity of the thought that sadness means that you care and happiness means that you are selfish.

Grief isn’t created by how much you love and care about someone; grief is created by the idea that what is happening to someone you love is bad.

Imagine that you are walking with somebody that you love and they suddenly trip and fall on their face. At that moment, you might laugh at them even though they might be hurt or, you might be sad for them.

Neither one indicates whether you love them or not.

You either laugh or cry depending on whether you tell a story in your head that was funny or sad that that happened. It’s not determined whether you love them or not.

If grieving or sadness was created by how much we love someone, then we would feel sad in every single moment after they passed or got injured. But that’s not the case.

You are maybe trying to feel sad in every moment. And at any moment that you capture yourself slightly happy, you feel guilty about it and you immediately tell yourself that it’s bad for you to be happy.

There is like an inner desire of wanting to stay sad because you believe that you love them.

However, in any moment that no story or thought pops up, that says what happened is bad, you are fine.

Sadness Is Just A Bent Of The Mind

You have to create sadness. When those thoughts or stories don’t pop up, you are automatically fine and there is nothing wrong with that.

There’s also nothing wrong with being sad from time to time.

But there comes a point when you have to recognize that the sadness is created by just telling the same story in your head over and over again.

At that point, you have to ask yourself whether you want to keep telling that story in your life or you want to get over it.

The best way of dealing with grief is to:

If you can admit that happiness doesn’t mean you are selfish, then you can move on and start becoming happy again.

Do you find yourself holding on to grief or sadness for a very long period of time?

What’s your most frequent thought when you feel grieving or sad – and how will you try to implement what you’ve just read today?

Let us know in the comments below.

About the Author

Matteo Trovato writes about positive ideas for living a happier life and becoming your greatest version. You can connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.